Word: knesset
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Israelis love plastering bumper stickers on their cars. Political slogans, catchy phrases and jokes all act as a gauge of the driver?s often cranky mood. So what are Israelis thinking about tomorrow?s parliamentary elections for the 120-seat Knesset? Judging from the glaring lack of bumper space Israelis seem to be dedicating to the race, not a whole...
...candidates may change, but Israeli elections follow a golden rule. Nobody ever wins a majority in the 120-seat Knesset - which often makes for strange alliances, especially amongst the more hawkish, conservative Likud party, more dovish and liberal Labor party and a whole slew of other smaller factions. Judging from the polls, this will hold true in next Tuesday's elections, in which the front-running, self-described centrist Kadima party, headed by acting prime minister Ehud Olmert, is expected to garner less than 40 seats. Kadima will need partners, and increasingly, it looks like one of those may well...
...potentially appropriate parallel for Hamas in Israel would be the Kach party, which was religiously fundamentalist and territorially maximalist, calling for the removal of all Arabs from Israel and the territories and the annexation of all territories captured in war. The party won one seat in the 1984 Knesset, but was banned in subsequent elections for being anti-democratic and racist...
...threat from outside. Voters will want to show support for the acting prime minister and for the security establishment, and that should translate into even bigger gains for Kadima. The most recent polls, before Palestinian result, showed Kadima in the lead, winning around 40 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. But after the Hamas win, that could go up to around 50 seats. People sense danger in the Palestinian result, and they want to support the government...
...right-wing politicians turned up to protest the fact that Palestinians were allowed to vote in Jerusalem at all. "This is the same as allowing Iraqi voters to vote for Al Qaeda and Zarqawi in a polling station in the Iraqi embassy in Washington D.C." far right-wing Knesset member Effi Eitam, part of one small protest, told Time. "If any single American can accept this then I'd like to know his name. This is a comedy of democracy. We are allowing murderers to be elected in the Holy City of Jerusalem...